Twister

Poem by John Grey

I have no sympathy for poles or wooden houses,
the old truck or the brand-new Buick,
men who worry about how they’ll pay their mortgage,
women who keep the house clean as navy decks.

I reject koi ponds, hours of work in gardens,
children trapped in the local shopping mall,
the machinery cluttering the farmers’ fields,
the sneakers left on the porch,

the horses huddled in their barns.
the warbler, the hawk, or anything that
reckons it can fly some place
other than where I blow it to.

The very layout of a town is of no interest to me.
A trailer park, cows in a field – no different.
I’m just a rapidly rotating column of air,
as violent as an army, as indifferent as their weapons.

I come suddenly. I leave destruction in my wake.
My opposite is a bunch of people mourning
their dead, tramping through the rubble,
the near-silent core of a funnel cloud of feeling.

John Grey is an Australian poet and US resident, recently published in Stand, Washington Square Review, and Sheepshead Review. The latest books, ”Between Two Fires,” “Covert,” and “Memory Outside The Head,” are available through Amazon. Work is upcoming in the McNeese Review, Santa Fe Literary Review, and California Quarterly.